Posted on 09/16/2022 10:47:46 AM PDT by DeweyCA
The United States of America is one of the more recent additions to what is loosely called "Western civilization," and yet our nation has manifested some of the West's greatest contributions to human society. As such, the cultural, political and social battles taking place here are compelling evidence of the current war against the values of Western civilization more broadly.
Those who would dismantle it have many forms of attack: They dismiss the contributions Western civilization has made to the overall health and prosperity of mankind and focus only on its shortcomings; they disparage the thinkers and political figures whose lives and careers contributed much to the evolution of the West, calling them "racists," "bigots" and mere "dead white males"; simultaneously, they ignore the bleak and brutal histories of other cultures and pretend that all cultures are equally capable of fostering human flourishing.
Among the most persistent and insidious attacks are those against the Judeo-Christian heritage that is inseparable from the advances of the West, including its art, architecture, commerce, music and education, as well as political, economic and social philosophies.
In the United States in particular, many of our most fundamental rights and principles find their origin in tenets of Judeo-Christianity. The Declaration of Independence states unequivocally that human beings have inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that are given to us from God, not government. And yet increasingly, our most prominent political leaders dismiss this out of hand.
In 2006, then-United States Sen. Barack Obama said in a speech, "Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers." And again in Turkey, in 2009, President Obama said, "Although ... we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation."
Above and beyond the arrogance of deigning to speak for how an entire country views itself, this was dangerous and conflated gobbledygook. It is one thing to take justifiable pride in the fact that Buddhists live in America, as do Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, atheists and countless others. It is quite another to suggest that the principles upon which the nation was founded are equally Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist or Sikh or atheist.
They are not.
It is not only in the founding documents in which we find the truth of the matter, but in the writings of the Founders themselves.
In his inaugural address, our first president, George Washington, said, "We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and the right which heaven itself has ordained."
The country's second president, John Adams, wrote often and passionately about the principles that formed the basis for the founding of the United States. In an 1813 letter to Thomas Jefferson, Adams reminded Jefferson that the armies of the American Revolution consisted of "fine young fellows" who were "Roman Catholics, English Episcopalians, Scotch and American Presbyterians, Methodists, Moravians, Anabaptists, German Lutherans, German Calvinists, Universalists" and others who, despite their doctrinal differences, were "never the less all educated in the general principles of Christianity, and the general principles of English and American liberty."
Adams continued, "I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God: and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature." Adams further credits these principles for the progress in the arts, sciences, technological achievements and resulting prosperity that humanity had witnessed "during the three or four last centuries."
Abolitionists like William Wilberforce, William Wilson, Evan Lewis and Angelina Grimke argued forcefully for an end to slavery using the Old and New Testaments of the Bible for support. In his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," civil rights icon Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, "A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law." King even cites Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas.
The warriors against the West are finding their task made much easier by the significant number of Jews and Christians who believe that the tenets of their faith require them to go along with the systematic dismantling of Western society in the name of "compassion," "tolerance," "cultural sensitivity" and the like.
But if the relentless secularists succeed, what will be left will be utterly inhospitable to the faithful. Those who seek to dissolve the underpinnings of Western civilization will replace it with raw power that they and they alone will wield, untempered and unmitigated by either reason or the rights our Founders expressly stated were derived from God.
Those who wish to preserve the best of Western civilization must realize that it will not exist without the Judeo-Christian principles that are its backbone. The eternal principles referenced by John Adams and Martin Luther King can never be destroyed. But nations that allow themselves to be led away from those eternal principles most certainly can be.
Judeo-Christian? It’s just Christian
There is no such thing as “Judeo-Christianity.”
Before 33AD there was Judaism. Since 33AD there has only been Christianity.
Bullshit. I’m a Jew, and the last time I looked at a calendar, it was not 33 AD.
Neoplatonic-Christian more than Judeo-Christian.
Of the many things produced by Western Civilization, the two that I think drive the Left the craziest are: individual freedom; and, competition. They cannot stomach that these truly are the fountains of prosperity*. Their own god, “equity” is the cesspit of poverty, decline, stagnation, death. (*both for the West and for other countries and systems in the world that have risen by emulating what the West created).
>>individual freedom; and, competition
How do these derive from Christianity?
There is probably more emphasis on them in Norse mythology.
Haven’t heard it put that way but it makes sense
Because he is speaking about Christian Nationalism, not Christianity.
“Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”
This is God’s Word.
“Christian Nationalism” is a nonsensical leftist pejorative for “Christianity.”
Totally different animals. Nice try. MTG called for Republicans to be the party of Christian Nationalism. She was selling T-shirts on Truth Social. There is audio.
The colonists who eventually created the USA spent 150 years developing the principles of Christian individual rights and private enterprise before incorporating them into our Constitutional order. They debated and wrote extensively about what they were doing and why. Many, many books have been written on this subject. Anyone who genuinely chooses to understand this subject can readily find the answers they're looking for.
https://www.amazon.com/Did-America-Have-Christian-Founding/dp/1400211107
MTG is being sensible and courageous. She knows that the commies are attacking Christianity while falsely claiming to be attacking something else they call “Christian Nationalism.” She’s calling their bluff by appropriating the commies’ pejorative as her self-identifier. If there was some meaningful distinction between “Christian Nationalism” and “Christianity” then you would already have stated what it is.
8. Influence
It is an undeniable fact, although nowadays rarely acknowledged, that the general outlook and the principal doctrines of the Neoplatonists proved exceedingly influential throughout the entire history of western philosophy. Through Augustine (354–430) in the West and the 4th-century Cappadocian Fathers (Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus) in the East as well as the pseudo-epigraphic writings of Dionysius the Areopagite (early 6th century), Neoplatonism profoundly influenced the emergence of mainstream and not so mainstream Christian theology (John Scotus Eriugena, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Meister Eckhart). In addition, by way of a pseudo-epigraphical treatise entitled Theology of Aristotle, Neoplatonic thought facilitated the integration of ancient philosophy and science into both Islam (especially through Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi and Avicenna [Ibn Sina]) and Judaism (Maimonides).
During the Renaissance, ancient Greek learning, and Neoplatonism in particular, experienced a dramatic revival in the West in the wake of the work of Gemistus Plethon (1355–1452), Bessarion (1403–1472) and, above all, Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), whose translation and interpretation of Plato and Plotinus in the second half of the 15th century influenced not only the philosophy, but also the art and literature of the period. It may even be true to say that even more than the writings of Plato and Aristotle themselves Neoplatonic ideas have continued to influence Western thinkers of the idealist persuasion, such as the Cambridge Platonists (who were really Neoplatonists), Leibniz, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin, to name but a few.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoplatonism/
Western Christianity derives more from Greco-Roman classical philosophy than Middle Eastern provincial religion.
Perhaps if the branches of Christianity East and South of Rome and Constantinople had prospered, it might be different, but Copts, Ethiopians, Syrians, etc. have not been that influential.
Whatever Dude. I read Truth, The Great Awakening. You think us normies need to be brought into the fold, gently due to our ignorance. Christianity is about faith, Christian Nationalism is a political movement that believes politics should be influenced by religious leaders, Christian leaders. It’s very different.
“You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”
Is this the sort of thing you oppose?
Dr Oz and his “bottom surgery for children leads the way. Of course a Turk is not going to call it what it is… mutilation.
I wrote “Western Civilization”, not “Christianity”. These are not synonyms.
That said, while some forms of Christianity are socialistic, the Reformation and Protestantism were built around individualism. Calvinism and its derivatives have a strong tilt towards capitalism and a competitive society.
But I had in mind not religion but the Western development of science and reason in the late Renaissance and Enlightenment, culminating in the proto “liberal” world view that gave birth to the American Revolution, republican government, and the US Constitution. The manifold ramifications of a competitive society and the institutions that support it are the reason modern industry, agriculture, and medicine produce mass quantities of cheap goods, food, miraculous health care, etc., that allow the world’s population to exist at current levels. Rid us of the “evils” (competitive capitalism and individual liberty) of “Western Civilization” and the world could support perhaps an eighth of its current population, and even that in precarious destitution. Perhaps critics of Western Civ desire an immense die-off.
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